Sson nodded and sighed, wondering when this bizarre night would end.
Through secret corridors, being cautious to avoid running into himself, Woland Brokker Sson took the Colonel back to his cabinet.
“Now,” he whispered, taking him out of his bag. “It’s very simple. It’s the first one who sees the other who dies on the spot. So—if this is truly what you want—all you have to do is keep those black eyes of yours open.”
“Ready,” the Colonel said curtly.
Sson took this in silently.
“Goodbye, Benedict,” he finally said.
“G’bye, Woland,” the Colonel mumbled.
Sson took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
“Yes?” a creaking voice boomed from the other side. “What the dickens?!”
Sson did his best to appear innocent. “Benedict? I have a surprise for you. Keep your eyes closed.”
“You wake me up to ask me to keep my eyes closed! Have you drunk too much mead, or what? Do you know what time it is, you crazy Norse witch-doctor?”
“You won’t be disappointed!” replied Sson. “It comes from Paris.”
“Paris? Hmph … All right, then, come in. But what the—” The Colonel had opened his eyes. “Is this what you promised me? This awful wax figure of myself?”
Sson thought quickly. “It comes from the Grévin Museum,” he said, relieved by the misunderstanding that would save him endless explanations. Still, he felt queasy holding not a wax head but the head of his dead friend, even if the head of his dead friend was, otherwise, very much alive.
“What sort of idiotic present is this, Woland? Do you think I want to spend my half-life watching myself?”
“You’re right, you’re right, Benedict. It was a stupid impulse. At least, it shows that I think of you.”
“I think of you quite often, too,” the Colonel grumbled with a reproachful look.
“Well, in any case, I apologize. And I wish you a very good night, Benedict. Goodbye,” Sson said, retreating hurriedly. “I’ll bring you another surprise tomorrow.”
“Oh, and Woland!” the Colonel shouted as the wizard was about to close the door.
“Yes, Benedict.”
“Err … thank you. For … you know … what you’re doing for me.”
“It’s my pleasure, Benedict,” Sson said, shutting the door, lost in thought.
He hastened, soft-limbed and wheezing, towards his laboratory, taking every precaution not to wake up his sleeping double. He entered cautiously and silently, and found it deserted, but with the fire still roaring in the chimney. He went to one of the ovens that he used for alchemical experiments, and as he opened it, the flames leapt out at him as if happy to see their master again.
With a prayer under his breath that figured in no prayer book, he carefully put the dead Colonel into the flames and turned away as the stench of burnt flesh and hair, and the reek of oil and grease, blended in the smoky air. He closed the oven and wondered what he would find in it one week from now.
But he knew he would never find out. Because he wouldn’t be he.
Another round of secret passages took him to another door, which he opened without knocking. He turned a lamp on low and came closer to the white canopied bed that occupied the middle of a room painted black, and lavishly decorated with furniture embroidered in gold knotwork.
“Hervör, my little swan,” he said, passing his hands over her face as if to magnetize her. Her eyes lit up, and from the pillow emerged a shining creature of white silver and pale gold, like a statue in armour. Long coils of hair like bronze cables were braided round her head, leaving uncovered the two shell-shaped phonograph horns that were her ears, and her angular cheekbones glistened in the fuzzy lamplight.
“Hervör,” he said, as she listened carefully. “I have two things to ask of you. The first is, please could you come at dawn to the north astrological platform, with a broom?”
The creature inclined her head with a gentle squeak of her slender asbestos neck. On her square breastplate, runes flashed in different-coloured gems, asking a question.
“To help me clean the traces of a little experiment. Every remainder of it must disappear. Every one. Yes? And after it is finished, you must not speak to me about it, ever.”
The creature flashed its agreement.
“The second is this: I would like someone to take care of the Colonel. I thought of a very able young Inuk called Tuluk, who, I think, works in the Technical Team of the Arctic Administration.”
He took a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a few words down.
“I am writing this down, because tomorrow morning I may not remember I gave such an order. You know that my memory is not what it used to be … Just show this to me when you meet me tomorrow. Is that all right?”
A flurry of lights answered him.
Sson smiled and passed his hand over Hervör’s face again.
“You feel a bit feverish, my little swan. You must have read for too long under your sheets …”
The North platform was being lashed by a terrible wind when Sson stepped out onto it, but he briefly stood and welcomed the blast with open arms. Then he flung himself back into the cast-iron armchair that faced the polar sea, and decided that it was time to die. What he had achieved tonight—bringing souls back from a half-imaginary city, taking them one week back in time—had never been done by any wizard before, and would never be bettered. But it had drained him of all his strength, and now he was little better than an empty husk. The other Sson—younger, if only by a week—would have no occasion to perform such a feat, but neither would he have had to cast his best friend into fire.
And with that, Woland Brokker Sson leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and put his hand on his heart. He remained there for a while, perfectly motionless. The wind that came from the north ruffled his long white hair, but not only that. By and by, it seemed to ruffle bits of his face and body as well, and then little pieces of the wizard started to flutter and whirl around, blown away as if he were but a heap of paper ashes—the old, torn scraps of a burning grimoire. His head, then his shoulders, began to disappear slowly, scattered in a black swarm of confetti and motes of dust, until just half of his face still leaned on the armchair … and then there was no face at all, his body thinning out until nothing remained of him but the empty armchair facing the frozen sea.
III
The Second Death of Gabriel d’Allier
It was very simple, Sson had explained in the Psychomotive: “Just see him before he sees you.”
Once the Psychomotive had been discreetly parked in its berth in Sson’s Castle, and its passengers released to live their second lives, Gabriel found himself alone on Beltane Bridge, entirely oblivious of his double. It was as if his chest had opened like a curtain to let the whole of New Venice shine in. His eyes greedily took in the vistas, the endless perspectives, the vertiginous heights, cramming them into his cranium until he felt dizzy. He wanted to take it all in: how the clusters of lamps softly reflected off canals of cracked china; how stalactites of ice hung from lampposts like inverted golden flames; how the snow cracked, as he walked, with the sound of torn gift wrap. Every filigreed shadow, pale on the bluish snow, every carved animal or godly figure on the walls, every warm, muted light behind ruby curtains—it all spoke to him like tarot cards, opening his senses to a code that only his body could crack. He yielded to the city, drifting through the streets, over bridges that looked serene as half-closed eyelids, beneath the ever-changing winks of the moon through shadowy archways, feeling all the while as if the city were following his steps, playing the sly fox with him every time he turned to catch a dome or a tower …
But he did, eventually, remember his grim task, and he couldn’t avoid arriving at the Blazing Building, where he was supposed to go, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to. But there was no way around it: this story had to end, and life had to return to what passed for normal in New Venice. Spurring himself on l
ike a tired old horse, he headed towards the golden dome, which seemed about to topple over on him, complaining to himself all the way that killing yourself twice in the same night was too much for one man.
It was his luck that as a menial to the Twins (as he liked to call himself) he knew every back door to the Blazing Building. Getting to their apartment was child’s play, but then Lemminkainen was always there, guarding it—a task that he was apparently unable to trust to another Varangian guard. Gabriel had speculated in the past that perhaps Lemminkainen, too, was in love with the Twins. Had he said “too”? No sane person could actually fall in love with the little buggers.
The lieutenant was slumped on his chair, apparently dozing, with a half-emptied bottle of akvavit on the desk in front of him. Gabriel knew him well enough to know that this was a minor dosage for him and that he would be awake and ready at the merest squeak of a floorboard.
Gabriel took a deep breath and entered the anteroom as casually as a man entering his own home.
Lemminkainen straightened up like a jack-in-the-box and saluted, his cap slightly askew.
“Huh? Mr. d’Allier?” the officer looked puzzled and embarrassed, “I thought you were already in there.”
“Almost, Lieutenant. Give me two seconds.”
Lemminkainen moved shyly to block the way, blushing like a brick house on fire.
“I must have been mistaken, then. But, if it’s not to you there … there is someone with them already.”
Gabriel could make out a slight note of disapproval—jealousy, as he’d suspected—as he stepped past the lieutenant and reached for the doorknob.
“The more the merrier, Lieutenant,” he said softly as he entered, so as not to alert the Twins, “the more the merrier.”
The Twins were busy indeed, as Gabriel noticed once he’d stepped quietly through the foyer into their bedroom and slipped behind the purple, peacock-eyed curtains. Now that his memories had come back, he remembered the scene perfectly, but seeing it from a new angle—seeing himself with them—didn’t repulse him as he’d first thought it would.
Of course, Gabriel could understand what certain despondent spirits found slightly unsavoury in his relationship with the Siamese twins. He had had his own qualms about it, although they were mostly about his ability to physically satisfy them both. His fears had proved groundless, however, for Reginald and Geraldine could very well take care of each other in his less inspired moments.
In fact, as twins, they were twice the fun; as androgynes, they took that to exponential extremes. Granted, there was something inherently interesting and funny about sexual difference. But compared to hermaphroditism, it had come to seem illogical to him, as well as an awkward waste of potentialities, and more and more often it made him feel that he was only half human. Fortunately, the Twins never mocked his disability except with the utmost gentleness. In the end, Gabriel’s only periods of doubt were during their cross-dressing moments, when he quickly got lost in the Who’s Who. He guessed he could live with that.
Even now, seen from behind the curtain, the scene didn’t seem that strange, really. In fact it had a sort of childish, happy-go-lucky spontaneity to it that was rather refreshing. As for watching himself, he was surprised by his pedantic tenderness and the care he took when inflicting it, which made him a far cry from the rake that others perceived him as being—and that he had vainly tried to become. And the Twins, well, weren’t they sweet little wonders, elfin and playful, folding and unfolding themselves like the wings of a white silk butterfly. Liberty, equality, fraternity—the motto was wasted on the French, Gabriel thought, being about as credible as calling New Venice “The City of the Sun” … but it was tailor-made for Reginald and Geraldine.
It seemed cruel to interrupt this trio, and so Gabriel waited, through the lento con amore, the staccato and the allegro, growing less and less patient as the whole performance gaily gamboled towards the final flourish.
At last his double, declining an encore, put on a fur coat and canvas tennis shoes and left the bed for the bathroom, and Gabriel, a mere wave behind the curtains, followed him there, managing to remain invisible to the Twins. It was eerie to relive the scene from two separate points of view that were each his own. Later, he would remember both points of view precisely: how he had been leaning over the washbasin in front of the mirror, immensely enjoying the fresh water on his face, while simultaneously wondering Can I do this through a mirror?
He stopped at the door, panicking.
“Close your eyes,” he told himself. “It’s not that difficult. It’s the way you’ve lived your whole life.”
He braced himself, looked to see where he needed to be, then shut his eyes tightly and stepped laterally so that he would be directly behind himself.
At the sound behind him, Gabriel I lifted his eyes from the white china washbasin and saw himself, eyes squeezed tightly closed, in the mirror like a bizarre double image. A quake of terror passed through him and switched off his heart. He collapsed on the checkered tiles, banging his chin against the washbasin, so that a small gash opened, trickling blood onto the marble chessboard.
“What have I done?” said Gabriel II, the Usurper, opening his eyes and kneeling down above himself.
“What have you done?” said two little voices behind him.
Huddled against each other on their bed, their sheets wrapped tight around them, the Twins stared at him wide-eyed in fear and disbelief.
“What can I do to prove it’s me?” Gabriel asked them in a voice that, he had to admit, would have made even a toddler suspicious. Suddenly, an idea came to him. Cautiously, slowly, he leaned towards them and whispered in their recoiling ears a secret that only he and they could know.
Geraldine blushed and pouted. “All right, let’s say it’s you. Who is he, then?”
“A younger me,” Gabriel scrambled to explain. “But not anymore—I’m him now, you see …?” He hoped that, given their own background, being born of a dead mother and all, the Twins would be partial to any explanation—so long as it was marvelous.
“Too bad,” Geraldine said dreamily. “We could have had fun all together.”
“But why did you have to kill him?” Reginald wanted to know. “Wasn’t he like a twin to you?”
“Because it’s him or me, understand?” Gabriel pleaded. “If he had seen me first, I would be dead. And all my memories of Paris would have been erased. Think of the bedtime stories you would have missed with that loser.”
The Twins sighed in unison.
“All right, then. But you could have—”
“I’m, sorry. Can we just say I’ve had a hard night? Now will your small Highnesses give me a hand in getting rid of that impostor?”
The Twins nodded, still sulking a little.
“Geraldine, will you please get me a curtain cord—a long one, with a tassle? And you, Reginald—unscrew this terrestrial globe.” He indicated a splendid Mercator globe at the other end of the room that showed the lodestone and the four rivers of the Pole.
They did not move but looked at him with what he deciphered as pity.
“Okay, one thing after the other, then,” he said, a bit embarrassed. “I’m going to fetch him,” and headed back to the bathroom.
At first, he thought to hoist his body over his shoulder, but then decided he couldn’t bear the thought of that. Instead, he grasped the collar of the fur coat and dragged himself to the bedroom, trying not to look at himself.
He was relieved to find that the Twins had assembled all he needed for the funeral and stood waiting in their dressing gowns, although still slightly wary. He felt sorry to have troubled them.
“All right,” he said as kindly as he could, “Would you help me bring all this to the embankment?”
The Twins clasped their arms around the heavy globe, while Gabriel took hold of a bronze candlestick to light their way, his other hand reluctantly dragging his dead self. They opened a door hidden behind the tapestry that uncovered a secret
passage. It gently sloped down in a spiral to the platform at the back of the building.
Once on the embankment, the candlestick at his side, his hands shaking from the shock more than the cold, Gabriel took the cord, fastened it around his double’s ankle, and made another tight knot to the arc of the globe, while the Twins watched him silently. He tested the strength and tension of the cord and found it satisfying.
He raised the body and sighed. He thought he ought to close the eyes but shivered in disgust at the idea of doing it.
“It’s time to throw him overboard,” he said, and he grasped the collar again to pull the corpse towards the edge of the canal. But glancing at his dead face, he changed his mind with a nervous realization.
“Wait a minute,” he said, something sinking in his stomach. “He’s too easy to identify.” He turned towards the Twins and said, “All right, your Highnesses. You can go back to bed now. I’ll come soon and tuck you in.”
Reginald and Geraldine hesitated, looked at each other, and eventually nodded before retreating into the passage.
Gabriel waited for them to disappear. Then, sitting astride his double’s chest, he wielded the candlestick in his trembling hand and, finally going berserk, set about bashing the corpse’s face to a pulp, his arm swinging faster and faster. It was not as easy as one may have thought: the flesh at first seemed to resist and the bones to rebound. But by and by, after much heaving and grunting from Gabriel, the forehead caved in with a squishy crack, the cheekbones splintered, the teeth burst and the chin twisted and split apart. When his own face was but a mass of bone shards and tartar steak, Gabriel got up on shaking legs. “Pheww …” he said in a quavering voice, his arms painful with exhaustion. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he whispered to himself.
Carefully averting his eyes, he grasped the corpse and hoisted it over the edge of the canal. Luckily, the thin layer of spring ice that gleamed on the surface of the water shattered as the body fell in. Dragged by its bronze ballast, it slowly sank to the bottom. The bloodstained, battered candlestick plunged in a second later.
New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos Page 50